Then she leaves with someone you don't know.
But she made sure you saw her
she looks right at you and bolts.
…
And your friends say, "What is it?
You look like you've seen a ghost."
They played the first Airborne Toxic Event CD regularly at my work and, even through a crappy sound system and the chaotic din of retail, those lines reached out and grabbed me. It wasn't just the punch of the lines themselves, it was the strings sawing away behind them and the way Mikel Jollett can pack so much drama into his vocals. It was the perfect marriage of music and lyrics, so you felt as bad as the singer.
Which is why Such Hot Blood, the new CD by Airborne Toxic Event, is such a disappointment. The elements are all still there, but they are no longer married. For a band whose strength has been passion, this is a very dispassionate album at heart. “Lukewarm Blood” would be more accurate.
Jollett's vocals still demand attention, still insist what he is singing is not only important, but vital to your life. That should be heartening, but when he's singing lines like: "There's nowhere to run/ because the secret is out" ("The Secret"), and "But it's alright/ I hope it's nothing bad/ you can call me when you're sad/ no matter what your father says" ("What's In a Name"), it all comes across as overdone. Not only are there no lines which jumped out on the first listen, there are few which made an impression after multiple listens.
Then the strings come in. Now,ATE have made very good use of strings before and emphasizing key points with them, but here they all but scream, "DRAMA ahead," and when the drama doesn't materialize, I feel like I'm at the movies, and the soundtrack is ruling my emotions, not the story or the characters.
Okay, I know this is a strange piece of criticism to level at a piece of music – that it is dramatic by itself. Plenty of music is dramatic; there's nothing wrong with that. But this is a question of context and expectation. For one, this is pop music, not classical. Sure, Beethoven's Fifth is dramatic by itself but, in pop music, the drama is supposed to support the words, not overwhelm them. And the particular type of drama here is the sort which says it's supporting a story, and the story is just too thin to deserve it.
And, as I said, the band did this so well before. So it's not so unreasonable to expect (hope) they do it again. I know what they are capable of but, for all the striving, they just don't reach it here.
It's only near the end of the album when Airborne Toxic Event tones the drama down that Jollett's lyrical talents return. "The Fifth Day" again inhabits heartbreak the way "Sometime Around Midnight" did. Here, the words are almost whispered, rather than shouted, "I hear our song; press repeat/ I smell you perfume on my sheets/ You always said, 'Boy, you're not so tough.'" When the song does get intense near the end, it feels earned.
In the second half of the album, the band manages to introduce some levity – or at least an acknowledgement of how heavy things have been so far. In "Bride and Groom," the singer is all distraught over the end of a relationship, but his girlfriend "took your clothes off instead/ and you danced around the room/ don't worry, you said/ cause the end is coming soon/ and we'll meet again someday."
"Elizabeth," which closes the album, explains all the preceding heaviness a bit. When his girlfriend complains he never writes her love songs, he replies, "All my songs are love songs/ Just love sometimes makes you feel like shit/ So you write a string of words down/ … I've never known love/ this is just my best guess."
Such Hot Blood is a case of a band setting the bar too high on their debut, and then being unable to leap over it again. The evidence of this album indicates that maybe their best bet is to not try so hard; tone down the drama and focus on real emotion instead.
But before I go, I have to ask if I'm the first person who has noticed that they stole the hook in "Timeless" directly from the Eighties hit "Whisper to a Scream" by Icicle Works. Look it up if you don't remember.
Artist:
www.theairbornetoxicevent.com/
www.myspace.com/theairbornetoxicevent
www.facebook.com/TheAirborneToxicEvent
www.twitter.com/Airborne_Toxic
Album:
Such Hot Blood is out now. Buy it here on Amazon .
